I've got a new 64 bit Gateway system with three monitors, a Gateway FPD2185W (1600x1080) 21" LCD and two Gateway 17" LCDs. The system came with a Colorgraphic Xentera GT quad display video card, but there are no 64 bit Linux drivers available from XIG (besides, they cost $199). I've had good luck with NVidia on Linux and was hoping someone here could make sure I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot here.

I'm thinking of using a dual vga FX5500 PCI card from PNY for the two 17" monitors and a dual DVI/D-SUB 6600 series (LE or GT) PCI-Express card from eVGA to run the big 21" monitor.

(Should I look at cards with all DVI or just go for the regular D-SUB vga connectors?)

This will be running on a 64bit Intel platform and using OpenSUSE 10.0.

Does anyone think I will have problems with this setup?

Thanks,
Matt

Thunderbird

01-03-06 12:45 PM

Re: Recommended NVidia Hardware for OpenSUSE?

I think the cards you proposed are a good option. Only connect the displays using DVI as at high resolutions you can easily notice drawing errors when lcd displays are connected using D-SUB.

Chewie71

01-03-06 01:00 PM

Re: Recommended NVidia Hardware for OpenSUSE?

Did I read somewhere that in Linux, the DVI interface limits you to the native resolution of the monitor? Not that I plan to change to a different resolution, I'm just curious.

Also...not sure if the dual PCI card comes with DVI, so I may be stuck with the D-SUB connector for the 17" monitors. I'd planned to use DVI for the big one though.

Also...will the 32bit Nvidia Linux drivers work ok on the 64bit OS? I don't think there are 64bit drivers available are there?

Thanks,
Matt

Thunderbird

01-03-06 02:39 PM

Re: Recommended NVidia Hardware for OpenSUSE?

There are no limitation on the use of DVI except for the limitations of DVI itself. Depending on the type of DVI interface (single or dual link) it supports upto 150-165MHz or somewhere above 300MHz. This is in general enough to get resolutions of lets say 1600x1200 working and ones a little higher.